Sonos One Now Supports Many More Popular Alexa Skills

I have an exciting message to share with everyone from our Alexa Voice team about what's new on Sonos with Alexa.

Chuck and Ryan, Product Managers for Alexa Voice at Sonos wrote:

Six months ago, we proudly made Alexa available on Sonos giving the power of voice control to our existing users through Amazon Echo devices. With the launch of Sonos One, we built Alexa right into our speakers - giving customers a new way to fill their homes with music by bringing voice control into their whole Sonos system.

When we announced Sonos One and cemented our partnership with Amazon Alexa, we made a commitment to continue enhancing and bringing the best of Alexa to Sonos. The launch was just the beginning and our teams have continued working together to launch new features.

Today we’re excited to share that 20 of the most popular Alexa skills are now available with full support and amazing sound on Sonos One!

These are just a handful of new ways to enjoy Alexa on Sonos. Since launch we’ve made incredible strides together, bringing more music, Alexa skills, features and improvements to Sonos. Here’s a quick summary:

In November, we brought the popular Flash Briefing and Sports Update features to Sonos One. Configure your news sources and favorite sports teams directly in the Alexa app, then say “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing” to your Sonos One.

In time for those unwrapping Sonos for the holidays, we made the setup better and significantly improved Alexa’s responsiveness. That means she is more likely to respond when you need her to.

This year we’ve launched Alexa on Sonos support in several new countries. In addition to the US, UK, Germany, and Austria, Sonos with Alexa was also made available in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with more countries to be announced. Our integration requires Alexa to be available in countries just prior to our launch so stay tuned for more global availability!

There are still many more desired Alexa features we’re bringing to the home sound system. We have a deep commitment toward building the premium listening experience, but some Alexa features will require more time to bring to Sonos. This often means that features remain off of our speakers until we get it right. Our clear focus has been to bring music and listening features sooner while other complimenting Alexa features will take longer to arrive.

We know that our user community appreciates the unparalleled sound quality, the uninterrupted experience and enjoyment of streaming music throughout their home. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize this. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll continue releasing more skills and features truly optimized for the premium, Alexa-enabled Sonos experience.

We want to thank our community for giving us feedback, helping us focus on the most important features to bring to you next. On behalf of our dedicated teams across Sonos and the many brilliant folks we work with on the Amazon Voice Services team, we hope you continue enjoying Alexa on Sonos throughout your homes, listening to whatever makes you happy.

is it those inclusive only - or do the skills to get those working mean some others not tested buy may work?

Those are the ones that are tested, confirmed and specifically worked on, with more to come. However, there's certainly the possibility that others will work as a result. Feel free to request specific Skills if you're looking for one. I can't make any promises, but I'll get them passed on to the team.

Help others find useful posts by selecting the best answer to your question. Hit the "like" button to highlight great replies.

Hey Ryan. I’m finding it confusing to know which skills work with Sonos and which ones don’t. Isn’t there a a way that the Alexa app can show which ones work with Sonos and which ones don’t? Otherwise, it’s cumbersome to have to add a skill, try it and wait to see if it works or not.

Great! But when will we be able to change the wake word and mute the wake sound?
Until I can do that, I have to leave Alexa turned off and leave my Echo Dot sitting next to my Sonos One. How many other Sonos One owners have kids named "Alexa" or "Alexis?"

Great! But when will we be able to change the wake word and mute the wake sound?Until I can do that, I have to leave Alexa turned off and leave my Echo Dot sitting next to my Sonos One. How many other Sonos One owners have kids named "Alexa" or "Alexis?"

On the skills losted in the original post, Absolute Radio is mentioned. Is this just the Absolute Radio skill, or does it include all the Absolute Radio skills such as Absolute 90’s, Absolute 80’s etc?

The reason for asking is that when I ask Alexa on my Sonos One, Absolute Radio works no problem. When I ask it to play Absolute 80’s, it responds with “Sorry, I’m having problems accessing your Absolute 80’s skill right now”. I don’t get this error when using an Amazon Echo device.

Since the Plex skill will now play music from a Plex server through Alexa devices, it would be great if this could work on Sonos! Especially since Plex has gotten their own Sonos integration working well! Time to return the favor!

My Name is Paul Armstrong and I am an Open Source Software developer and proponent. I have 7 Sonos One systems. I am looking to use Sonos One and Alexa to stream my rather significant and high quality media collection. I have found an excellent software tool that runs on Linux but its use requires access to the Alexa AudioPlayer interface on the speaker. The current firmware revision does not provide an endpoint for this API. So no joy. I have several questions as it seems that this request has been in the pipe for a long, long time:

1) Is the lack of this interface due to contractual obligation with streaming providers to drive consumption of online services? If it is, I am OK with that. I will simply return/sell all devices and move to a different platform. I understand the business imperatives that may exist, but there is functionality that I want from my music platform.
2) If the lack of interface is not due to contractual obligations, please specify an approximate date when this interface will be made available in beta or production. I am happy to test.
3) If there is an issue with implementing the interface within your firmware codebase, please, reach out to the open source community. We can help and drive the development.

Please feel free to contact me directly, off board, through my account information.
I look forward to hearing from you.

I can answer number 1 for you. Sonos is on record that they receive no payments from streaming services. If you need anything resembling a precise date on a development from Sonos, or an open-source alternative, you will be breaking some of Sonos' lifetime habits, but let's see what they say. I fear your Sonos will be ending up on eBay, which would be a shame (except for someone else).

Understood. There is a difference though between receiving payment and having a contractual obligation to not compete.
As "firmware" in the this case is almost certainly a small custom Linux distro, I can't see why this could not be implemented in 1 or 2 sprints within their development cycle. This is not complicated code, so I find it difficult to understand why this is not being implemented other than for a business reason.